| Bring the motherfucking ruckus |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|07:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Frantic | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Bab's Ulva Who?-Green Day | ] |
Hot on the heels of my brief bout of doubt and terror, I was the recipient of a lovely email this morning from the good folks at Aberystwyth University saying that I had, in effect, gotten a spot in the lovely seaside residences that I'd applied for.
The terrifying part is that I now have nine days to pay £100 deposit, and get the contract for housing signed, witnessed, and next-day-or-really-fucking-quickly shipped to the housing department or I lose my place.
I am thinking I will probably have to pull some sort of waking up at an odd hour shit in order to make the trans-Atlantic phone call to the university so I can charge the deposit to my credit card, because I sure as shit don't have cheques with pounds on them.
Not valid ones, anyway. Ah well. |
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| Agh |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|11:08 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Mercurial | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Friend of Time--Brightblack Morning Light | ] |
Oh, July! Didn't see you there.
And who's that coming around the corner there? Is that Birthday? Well, fuck me flat. I was just thinking about how I wanted to ponder being fucking twenty-four years old, working construction for a pittance, living with my parents, and trying hard not to completely fuck up my one chance of getting out of this city for something approaching "good."
Have I really reached the point where the passing of another year on the planet has become an opportunity for me to sink into a black depression? Because I think I have, if the past few days have been anything to go on. Fortunately it has gotten me to take care of getting the last of my paperwork for visa application two: electric boogaloo, so there's a bright point to it all.
Work appears to have been canceled for the morrow; and at this point it had fucking better be because otherwise I will be tired as shit.
It's a funny thing: I really, really want it to be September because that's when I go to Wales. At the same time, I keep feeling almost consistently that there's not enough time; though time for what I am never quite sure of. One thing is for sure, this whole needing to sleep thing is probably to blame. |
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| Cooler climes and long weekends |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|10:29 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Much cooler | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Is an Elegy--Youngblood Brass Band | ] |
So this was a good weekend; I got to Nate's house to watch movies and enjoy the finer things life has to offer. Two days later, I dragged myself to work and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the weather has cooled down significantly; this week is apparently "cool the fuck down" week in Cincinnati and that is perfectly okay with me.
Okay, I will admit that I am merely posting here because I haven't done so for like nine days and I think that is probably long enough to go without posting something that isn't 140 characters long.
What I really need to do is get back on my storywriting horse, but it threw a shoe sometime last week and has since then sulked in a corner, casting meaningful glances towards a shotgun. I must wait for something to put the shoe back on, only I devoured so much cinema over the weekend that I am even burned out on experiencing stories. It is possible this means that I shall have to fire up my copy of Pro Evolution Soccer, as that is one of the only games I own that is not an exercise in storytelling.
Of course, a game such as that is kinda boring when played solo. Oh well.
I got nothing else for you kids. Go 'way. |
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| Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaales |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|09:36 pm] |
Wow, it's been a long time since I utilized this particular corner of the internet. A lot has happened since that last post--namely, I got my student visa application rejected on a technicality (I am currently getting shit together to reapply, and it is not a big deal (just an expensive one)), finished most of the projects at work save a final pool, and burned about...3/4 of the way through Gravity's Rainbow.
The re-reading has gone surprisingly well; there's things I didn't catch before (like all the machinations Pointsman sets in motion in order to run his experiment) as well as stuff that I'd forgotten about entirely (like the fact that Geli tags along with Slothrop for way longer than I remembered). At the same time, I really feel the need to burn through the rest of the novel quickly, because I have three Raymond Chandler books that are waiting to be read and I've been on a severe noir kick this summer, so I want to get to them.
Incidentally, the amount of nods that Pynchon gives to the noir genre makes me wonder only why it took him so long to write one of his own.
Following that noir kick has also included seeing Brothers Bloom, which is more of a caper film but it's by the dude who did Brick, which was a noir film (and a well-done one at that), picking up Spiderman: Noir which I didn't even know existed until today, and reading Rasl, which is Jeff Smith's first foray back into longform comics since he finished Bone, I think.
Rasl, it should be noted, is sci-fi/noir and is incredibly cool. It is also nothing like Bone in terms of story, though the art has that same exhaustive attention to detail that Smith demonstrated throughout the Bone series.
I have been these past two days increasingly desirous of an exit to cooler climes, perhaps ones that are in Wales, and a long conversation with a friend of the family last night had me waxing nostalgic for those heady days at Oxford. I miss that place, I miss hearing English accents everywhere, and mostly I think I miss being able to put salt and vinegar on fucking everything. I even bought some salt and vinegar crisps last night in a fit of nostalgia, but it just wasn't the same. I wasn't in a pub, for starters. Still, if nothing else it got me back in the proper frame of mind to once again do battle with British Bureaucracy so that they'll let me in their fucking country.
Oh, and it's balls-hot here, but my mother has decreed that we are saving money by roasting to death. This has further contributed to my desire to live somewhere else, perhaps on my own once more so that I can stop feeling like a failure who lives with his parents. |
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| You win this time, Responsibility |
[Jun. 1st, 2009|09:39 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Hooooah | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure--The Weakerthans | ] |
So today I was going to go to a Decemberists concert. I was excited for it, I had purchased my tickets for it back in...March, probably, and basically things looked like they were going to be pretty awesome.
Only thing is, I bought those tickets fully expecting that I would not be employed. Or, if I were employed, that I would be employed at a job where I worked evenings, had the day off, and did not have to be up at six in the morning. This was not the case, as the carefully laid plans of mice, etc.
So I had to give the concert a miss, because as much as I would love to see the Decemberists, I would much rather see them without the knowledge that I wouldn't get back from Columbus until like two in the morning for a restful four hours before having to go and haul concrete block around on my back or whatever it is I've got on the docket for tomorrow.
So instead, I got a new bike, guys it is awesome, returned a DSL modem to Best Buy, and got some coolant for my car, which was mysteriously running low (although oddly enough, I cannot find any evidence of a leak. I have concluded that gnomes stole my antifreeze, or that I need to get the cooling system cleaned out. You know, one of the two).
That is...about all I've got to say today. I started reading Gravity's Rainbow again, because every so often I need my brain to be beaten to a pulp by a novel and this seemed a good time to gear up for a second read-through of the thing. The re-reading of V. was unexpectedly incredible, so I'm hoping for a similar result this time through. We'll see.
Spent the hottest part of the day mixing concrete. This involved rather a lot of eighty pound bags of Quickrete, me, and an elderly mixer that I am 90% certain fought in the first World War. Eighty pounds is not that heavy, but after the tenth bag it starts to get old.
I am kind of tired, is what I am saying. |
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| Wow |
[May. 29th, 2009|11:22 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Gamed out for now | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Bread and Butterflies--Pogo | ] |
It seems as if I've a bad habit of completely forgetting that this thing exists these days. In my defense, I've been rather busy.
Namely, I've been rather busy with being in New York, which resulted in me discovering that despite the warnings of how terribly bad the Chronicles of Riddick series is, I fucking love Chronicles of Riddick. There, I said it and I'm not sorry that I did so. Vin Diesel is just nerdy enough in his obsessive love of the Riddick character that it makes the whole thing awesome, and really once you start thinking of the whole thing as Conan the Barbarian, but in space and with shiny eyes, it becomes far more entertaining.
This has of course led to me eyeing copies of the new Riddick game longingly--my brother picked it up whilst I was in New York, and that was some time lost there I tell you. It was thoroughly enjoyable time spent, as was our sudden mutual rediscovery of the Fallout series and how awesome it is.
There's been a lot of "Oh hey, I forgot how fun that was!" going on these days, from my return to Mass Effect a few weeks ago to my long-delayed return to the glorious Capital Wastelands this evening to my wandering around post-apocalyptic California over the past few days. Clearly I am on some kind of gaming renaissance (oh, and let's not forget Team Fortress 2, which has seen more play from me), which is pretty awesome. |
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| Holy fuck, kids |
[May. 23rd, 2009|12:33 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Hmm | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Love and Logic--American Steel | ] |
I will actually be going to New York pretty goddamned soon (like Sunday), and I have failed utterly to take care of everything I wanted to before I left. Fortunately I have one more day to get all my shit together, do laundry, get my bike fixed, etc.
The only problem is that I would much rather spend the day playing Team Fortress 2 and maybe catching a matinee showing of the new Terminator movie because...well, because. It makes sense to see a movie about robots and guns and shit--I mean I'm going to wind up seeing the new Transformers for that very reason!
I really, really don't have anything worth saying here, but I was like "Damn dude you haven't done one of these in forever maybe you should."
Guess it wasn't a great idea. |
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| Tupping menace |
[May. 13th, 2009|09:14 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Dithering | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Jumping the Shark--The Lawrence Arms | ] |
Okay, so I actually spent the morning at work, but then there was all this rain, so I got sent home early and then wound up going to Little Ceaser's for lunch because I could. Any large pizza that only sets you back a fiver can't be fantastic, but it's actually pretty decent pizza (better than say, Papa John's, who will charge a sight more than five bucks) and DID I MENTION IT IS ONLY FIVE DOLLARS?
I have been working hard at this whole writing thing, pushing myself to greater heights (or lows) by experimenting with different styles and different genres and...I think I burned myself out. Or at least, I can't seem to build up a head of steam for anything. I have a few exchanges, a few bits of stuff floating around now, but I lack the will to force it into being, as it were. In fact, I just deleted a good thousand words of something I'd been fiddling with all day because upon a second reading I really could not in good conscience think of it as something up to snuff.
Because I have a standard that all my writing--especially the stuff I write solely for myself and never consider sharing/trying to get published--has to live up to, and if it doesn't I'll delete it without a backward glance. This particular thing had been chugging along at a merry pace until it ran into some kind of narrative tar, and in the end the only bit I kept was the final two lines. But that is the way of the world, sometimes.
I think part of the problem is that I finished reading The Great Shark Hunt a few days ago and have yet to pick up a new book to read. I've been enjoying the shit out of my weekly New Yorker, but magazine articles, no matter how well they are written, just don't get the ol' brain buzzing with inspiration. They do, however, get me thinking about various subjects that would be cool to write about if only I could get things in any sort of coherent narrative order. Long story short: I need to start another book. The question is, will it be Gravity's Rainbow or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? A tough decision, not one that I can make lightly.
Last.fm continues to delight me with music that I haven't heard already. |
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| Pretty good weekend |
[May. 10th, 2009|03:36 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Pleased | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | I'm Sticking With You--The Decemberists | ] |
So I saw Star Trek the other day with a cadre of like-minded individuals, and while it was an excellent experience, we somehow managed to make the rest of the evening even more entertaining. I will possibly roll around my thoughts on the movie and come out with some kind of take on it one of these days, but for now let's just say that I enjoyed myself quite thoroughly and we'll leave it at that.
Oh hell, I can't just leave it at that. It was balls-out awesome, and the rather gutsy decision to find a way to make a reboot of a series part of the canon of that very series paid off in spades. It helps that the acting is so surprisingly good (especially Karl Urban's take on Bones and Simon Pegg's Scotty (Fair warning: He does say "I'm giving her all she's got, captain!" and it will make your head explode with delight)), the story is solid, and all the worries that I had about the plotline seeming a wee bit improbable are smoothed over with that patented Star Trek method of mentioning a one or two word explanation and just leaving it at that (seriously, "red matter?"). Exiting the theatre, I was able to turn to my friend Riga and say "Man, that was a fucking cool movie," and mean it. So much for that.
The rest of the evening was spent playing pool in the basement while consuming both cigars and various beers and liquors, which while not how I generally spend my evenings (as we all know, I spend my evenings staring at a computer screen whilst trying to think of something cool to do) is a pretty goddamned good time every once in a while. I myself smoked one or two too many cigars, which basically meant that I gave myself a headache for a little while and spent an hour or so staring at a wall whilst trying to stop the room from spinning. Fortunately I was feeling better by the time we tired of pool and decided to play Rock Band.
Riga was down for the count by this point, so we soldiered on without a bassist. There were three of us still standing and coherent (mostly) by this point: Myself, Nate, and New Girl, whose name was probably Laura or something but I can't quite recall...anyway she's a friend of Nate's and a decent human being. At some point we ordered pizza, and I discovered that Papa John's has a mobile website specifically for ordering pizza. It's a slick site, and the ability to order a meal using only my iPod Touch (which performed admirably, especially in the battery department. I was on and off the wi-fi network all night and after all that abuse it still had enough juice to serve as the soundtrack for the morning) is a novelty that will probably never quite wear off.
Things wound down just after midnight, and as I was in no condition to operate a motor vehicle I wisely sacked out on Nate's couch with the intention of heading back home first thing in the morning. This did not happen, of course. I actually woke up around eight, and Nate and I decided to grill some steaks as the weather was so fine (and still is quite fine). Arming ourselves with steak and a glass of his newest homebrew (a little hair of the dog that bit us, though neither of us were suffering any ill effects beyond my mouth tasting like an ashtray), we sat idly on the front porch and dined upon steak, oranges, and some tater tots. Once the beer was finished, we switched to tea, and the morning continued from there. By the end of things we'd been joined by Beiner, Laura(?), Riga (who was suffering the ill effects of the previous night and left early in order to shower and such), and the Elder Beiner even briefly joined our circle. Around about noon, we decided to clean things up, and I left the house at one.
Then there was a lot of showering and shaving and brushing my teeth about five times to get the tobacco stains off of my tongue. There's still a bit of cigar-flavor roiling around in there, but you can only do so much to get rid of it. After that it's just a matter of playing the waiting game.
It was a fine way to spend the bulk of my weekend while still giving me the ability to come home and tidy up a bit before the mater and pater arrive back tomorrow night. Doubtless I shall cook myself a meal tonight, though for now I am satisfied to sit and relax, enjoying the nice weather and contemplating the mysteries of the universe, or at least the book in front of me. Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, life is simply good and there's not shit you can do about it. |
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| Yep, definitely post-mortem |
[May. 6th, 2009|12:01 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Whee | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Time Bomb--Dismemberment Plan | ] |
Got that beautiful phone call today that said I didn't have to work for my boss any more. Then made a phone call to get my old job back. I start Friday.
This has been a hell of a ride, and I don't mean that in a good or a bad way necessarily. I had some times that were pretty okay, and I made some friends (d'awww), but at the same time I fucking hated everything the job represented. And sure, I got paid to sit on my ass for a solid nine days this past week and a bit, but it was goddamned boring, guys.
But! It put me into new situations where I had to interact with strangers on a daily basis and remain civil, which is probably a good skill to pick up. Not that I plan to interact with strangers on a daily basis ever again unless they are sitting in my classroom (in which case they will only be strangers for like a week, then they will be My Students), but I feel like it was a good idea to pick that one up.
Celebrated the end of the job by grabbing some Pepsi Throwback (which tastes awesome) and an iPod Touch (which probably does not taste awesome but does do some cool things). Good times, good times.
I also watched Brick again, this time at Nate's house. It felt good to go see friends again, I think it could become a habit with this whole "you have evenings again" thing. |
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| Post-mortem? |
[May. 5th, 2009|01:48 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Hmmm | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | A River Could Be Loved--Brightblack Morning Light | ] |
Welp, I think I'm done with my job now. I left my badge when I left, but there's still a chance that I'll get called in tomorrow for some goddamned thing or another.
And yeah, it's extra money that I would not have otherwise but at the same time Jesus Christ just end this fucking thing already. I'm tired of night shifts, working every day of the goddamned week, and dealing with customers. I'm tired of data entry. I'm tired of filing cabinets and filing systems and everything else.
I want to go outside. I want to go to sleep before three in the morning, wake up before noon, and have a job that obviates the need for a daily run.
I will miss maybe one of the people at my job, because he is a Dude and a Half, but we have phones and shit, so we'll probably get together one of these days.
But I think it's over. We'll find out for sure tomorrow.
Also the new album by Westbound Train is fucking delicious. |
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| Would have made me their king |
[May. 1st, 2009|02:07 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Liberated | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | White Mystery--Minus the Bear | ] |
Today, I was offered a supervisory position for the June project at work.
I turned it down. More responsibilities for the same amount of pay? Fuck that, sisterfriend. It's crucial to me that I keep my soul on this gig, and leaving at the end of this project is the best way to do it. Besides, I'm excited as hell about making my triumphant return to the Pool Building World, and there's no way in hell I'm going to welch on that deal, not when it's for a job I like.
From an economic standpoint, it was probably not the right decision. I will doubtless make less working pools for those two weeks that I would be doing the June project. But I've always been one to put personal preference above things like economics anyway (hell, it's part of why I'm going to Wales). Building pools pays a little less, yes, but I'm happier with the idea of building pools.
I've talked about it before--the satisfaction I get from working construction is greater than the satisfaction I've gotten from any other job in recent memory. So that's how it's going to be, and after turning down that job offer today, I smiled and felt happier than I have in days. |
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| Young and Stupid, I guess |
[Apr. 29th, 2009|12:58 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Nostalgic | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Or, Don't You Remember--American Steel | ] |
So I went back and read some stuff I'd written...oh, this past summer, I think. I was surprised to find that I actually liked the thing I'd written, even more so to discover that there weren't any glaring technical errors in it. It was almost good, though I hate to call anything I do good for the simple reason that if anything I wrote were good I wouldn't have an inbox full of polite rejection letters.
Well, I probably still would, but there would maybe be at least one letter saying "Hey we want to publish this." But still, it's always neat for me to go back and see how I was writing a couple of months ago, or a year ago, and then look at whatever it is I'm working on now in order to realize that my style has changed yet again. Elements of last year's writing are still there, but they've fallen to the background; far from having A Style like I thought I did, I instead have A Schizophrenia, which is almost like A Style only it never stops shifting around.
I'm pretty sure that other authors have this problem too, but I can pick up a new book by Neil Gaiman and know that it's something he's written because it still reads like something he wrote years ago. Maybe a little more polished, but clearly Gaiman. I can do the same thing with Thomas Pynchon, or fuck, J.R.R. Tolkein (though not with Hunter S. Thompson; Hell's Angels reads nothing like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, though Hell's Angels is really the exception to the rule). I, on the other hand, can only recognize some of my work by noticing that I signed my name as the author of it, and nothing else is familiar. Other times I shake my head slowly and incredulously at the idea that I ever thought this was good. I mean Christ, some of the things I've written...
Well, they were pretty bad, I guess. Some things, not so bad. So a trade off, there. |
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| Yeah I know |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|01:04 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Embarrassed | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | 25 Hour Goddamn Telethon--Bomb the Music Industry! | ] |
Okay, okay. I've been terrible about updating this thing. You know it, I know it, and the little man standing next to my laptop, staring disapprovingly through his inky mask knows it.
I just tend to not use this thing much anymore, not unless I've got something interesting to say, or I get the urge to tell a story about something that happened whilst I was going about the business of living. And to be quite honest, I don't know that there's a whole lot of fascinating things going on right now that I haven't already talked about.
So let's talk about Brick, which is a movie that everyone should have probably seen by now, right? I mean come on people, this movie kicks incredible amounts of ass. It's the perfect noir formula, wrapped up in the familiar package of...high school.
That's the hook. Because when you were in high school, that's all there was. The world revolved around the place, and things that happened outside of high school were all kind of on the periphery. We played at being Adults, assuming that the social structures of high school would carry on in the real world (and sometimes, this was right. Other times, well. College changed some of those perceptions). So the Administration became the police, with the real police being the equivalent of the Feds. The teachers were either people you trusted or tried to avoid, possibly double agents. Everyone was making a play for something--popularity, mostly--and we formed our groups, and did our deals in the hallways or at a parent's house. And it's this world that is merely taken to the next logical step in Brick, with a complete absence of any parental figures save one--and she's only there to reinforce how pitiful one of the characters is (I mean, come on, the dude's mom is on screen! Talking to his people! How embarrassing).
So the whole sordid thing explodes and feels like you're watching The Maltese Falcon down to some of the lines the characters say, but that new setting gets you hooked so completely that you don't even notice. And sure, you'll probably see who's the mastermind pretty early on, but it's not waiting for the Big Reveal that makes you want to watch this movie, it's waiting to see how these characters are going to react to the Big Reveal. And they react, and it's awesome, and the whole thing is more hard-boiled than a whole fucking platter of deviled eggs.
Jesus, did I just say that? Okay, that's it. We're done here. Watch Brick if you haven't already. Or shit, watch it again if you have. |
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| Things to cross off |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|01:24 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Pretty goddamned grand | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse--Minus the Bear | ] |
"You know, I have no fucking idea how to drive this thing." The simple observation floats in the air of the truck cab, wind whistling through the open windows as I clutched my cigar in my teeth and gripped the steering wheel tightly, pumping the breaks as we careened across the intersection of Glenway and Queen City.
"You're doing fine, I think." Nate replied from the passenger seat, also smoking a cigar. They were the small ones, not like the larger two we'd had earlier, and unlike the previous cigar we weren't drinking either. But I had decided to do something interesting today beyond my general "surprise day off" routine--wait, that's not true. I was completely prepared to have lunch, return home, and then maybe watch some cartoons or something until I went to sleep.
Instead, when I heard that Nate had agreed to help set up for an after-prom for his boss, I thought "Hey, you've got nothing better going on, might as well join in. Maybe it'll be fun. Or at least interesting."
So we left Nate's house (after a drink and a smoke to get us in the proper frame of mind for a leisurely day's work) in my car, traversed the three or four blocks to Dave W.'s house, and after a brief introduction to Kevin (I think his name was Kevin, anyway. I'm bad with names) we got to work. Dave had rented one of those massive U-Haul trucks--we're talking the sort of truck you use when you want to empty an entire goddamned house and pull it across several state lines--and we quickly loaded the gear for the after-prom, sharing another beer later when we'd successfully loaded the truck up.
At this point I still thought that Nate and I would be riding with Kevin, and Dave would drive the truck. Except Dave wasn't coming along this time. Kevin had to go separately in his car so that we could get back from the gig (Dave wanted to leave the truck up there to save on gas, and rightfully so. A truck that size devours gasoline like a starving man at an all you can eat buffet), which left Nate and I to drive.
Now I've had some experience with a small dump truck before, but this truck was significantly larger, and a rental besides. It was inevitable, therefore, that I would decide on the spot to drive the thing, no questions asked, nothing but a set of questionable directions printed out from Mapquest and a tin of mini-cigars that Nate had brought along with the intention of sharing in Kevin's car on the way up.
I was (and still am, actually) fighting a cold, meaning that most things just taste bitter to me, but I was not about to be the sort of person to pass up the opportunity to stare down at motorists from my perch on high with a cigar clenched between my teeth. So we lit up shortly after pulling away from Dave's house, and as I dodged the various cars parked on the side of the road, missing several by meters, I started to wonder if this was the best idea. Nate had experience with this kind of vehicle, after all. He was more qualified, but he'd also had an extra beer and was currently feeling its effects--not drunk, mind you, but at the tipping point. My own head was too busy being stuffed up in order to feel any of the whopping two beers I'd consumed over the past few hours, so in that respect perhaps it was a smarter move for me to drive after all.
Oh, the rush that comes with zipping down a massive hill in a long box truck, trying not to ride the brakes, wondering if someone's on the other side of that curve...To say that I was enjoying myself too much to give thought to the sort of trouble I'd be in if there was an accident would be completely accurate if not for the fact that Nate and I had fixed upon the topic of just how illegal our current activities might be. I'm fairly certain that as neither an employee of Dave's business nor as a person old enough to rent a vehicle, there would have been some kind of trouble had we attracted the attentions of the law, but as I managed to do a fairly good job of keeping the truck under control we weren't in any real danger.
As the trip continued, we noticed that a warning light kept coming on about the brakes, making a high pitched scream that drove me nearly off the road in annoyance. "You miserable bastard!" I howled at my red tormentor, "You're a goddamned liar! The brakes are working just fine!" We later discovered that the problem lay in the brake pedal, which had managed to get stuck just far down enough to trigger the brake lights, but not the brakes themselves. Once we'd solved that mystery, the squalling ceased and the trip continued along in a most pleasing way.
Still later, the directions gave us the wrong distance on a road so that we weren't going nearly far enough to reach our destination--and as it turned out, Kevin had taken a far quicker route to meet with the contact and was wondering where the hell we were. The trip soured a bit at that point, annoyance with the goddamned directions and the contact who'd failed to mention they were waiting for us brought both Nate and I down from our initial euphoric states, but that first fifty miles or so was a goddamned blast and made the whole trip worthwhile.
It was one of those experiences that you look back on and regard with a small sort of pride in my case, because I so rarely go out and do stuff. The fact that I even decided to go to Dave's to help load the stuff in the first place (for free, no less) took effort--then again, I was bored and enjoying hanging out with people who aren't from the office, so maybe that provided enough motivation to get moving. To actually sit behind the wheel of the truck and start driving, well. That was something else entirely. Hell, I'm not even exactly sure what possessed me to do it, but the sense of adventure was more than enough to let me know that I'd made the right decision.
I'm not even sure that I would have regretted skipping out the whole experience, to be honest. There's things I have to get done around here while I've got the time (I've got Saturday off as well, which is nice), and I would have come home and done some writing and read a little and considered the whole day a success.
But knowing now what I would have missed, well. This could become a regular habit. Certainly makes these entries a little more interesting to write. Maybe next time I'll be in better health. |
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| ....Hi |
[Apr. 14th, 2009|01:58 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Blind Mary--Gnarls Barkley | ] |
After declaring that I would try to talk about things that weren't my job, I dropped off here for a while. This is because work has been at the front of my mind, despite my constant battle to make it otherwise.
Today seems like a pretty good day for talking about Hunter S Thompson, though. So I'm going to do that.
I am not exactly sure what kept me from reading HST for so long. As someone who kind-of-sort-of grew up reading about the way things were in the 60s and 70s and thinking "Hey, there was a lot of interesting shit going down back then,*" and as I grew up I read basically all of the interesting authors that people talk about, or tried to anyway. Hunter S Thompson somehow flew completely under my radar until sometime in high school, when I saw a reference to the guy in some other book I was reading. I'm no longer sure what the book was, but I'm sure it was, uh...interesting at the time.
So with that, I started to think "Hey, I should read this guy," only I was in high school and discovering things like webcomics and pornography** and shedding my bookish nature somewhat. I didn't read quite as much, and I had sort of centered on a few authors that I wanted to read more than Hunter S Thompson, so I never got around to him, and then sort of forgot about him for a while again.
Then I read Transmetropolitan in college (courtesy of Goj), and all of a sudden he was back on my radar and something that I wanted to read. Hell, forget read, he had a job that sounded fucking sweet. I do believe I even made a few posts here about the desire to go monstering at the time, but somehow I still didn't manage to read anything actually written by the dude. Just things based on his personality. It's taken until the past month or so for me to actual move from meaning to buy something by the guy to actually doing so and reading it. It was completely worth the wait, too, because reading Hunter S Thompson has not only given me a couple of new ideas to try as a writer myself, but he's also gotten me interested in the world around me in a way that I haven't been in a long time.
Let me explain: When I write a story, I think about ways to make the world more interesting. There's a reason that my output has been centered around zombies and gods and what-have-yous, and that's simply because I had no other way of describing the world in a way that was interesting. Now my constant reading and re-reading of Thomas Pynchon has by this point gotten me out of that habit--I can write about things that are at least plausible now, or that is to say I can write things about say, going to the store to buy some milk and still have it be interesting. But in terms of getting material, well, it's all coming out of my head and the things I've done and seen or read about. And somehow it seemed to always lean more to the "things I've read about/come up with" side rather than things I've done and seen. Then I read Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72, and all of a sudden I realize that talking about the people around you is far more interesting than I've given it credit for. Not just that, but there are stories everywhere.
Not all of the things that Thompson wrote about were particularly interesting at first glance. I certainly never expected to find politics so gripping. It's all in what you talk about, who you choose to portray, and whether or not you can summon the sort of breathless, machine-gun delivery that makes you want to keep reading in spite of yourself. Since reading some more of Hunter S Thompson's work (I'm currently finishing up Hell's Angels, at which point I will take a break to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, then I plan to start on The Great Shark Hunt), I've started to see stories everywhere. Things that may not seem interesting at first blush, but given the right character, the right tone...
I've also gotten interested in the idea of writing nonfiction*** as well as fiction now. Certainly I don't think I'll ever stop writing about zombies, but if I want to write a series of essays about say, the process of renovating a shitty, run down building and converting it to a wine shop/bar, well. I will do that, too. And if I do it properly, people will read it and find it interesting, and maybe take something away from the whole thing. Or maybe they'll just find it enjoyable. I'm good either way. As long as people are willing to read things I write, I think I can be pretty satisfied. Sometimes you read an author who manages to change the way you look at the world. Hunter S Thompson is, for me, one of those authors.
*I never did think there was much interesting going on during the 90s, though. And still don't know that it was exactly a decade of upheaval the way it was in the 60s. Now the 00s, well... We've got a little more unrest going on now, and there's that whole black president thing--and I'm older and more observant of the way shit is going down all the time if you look for it. Plus pirates are now a regular thing in the news for the first time in like 300 years. You know that shit is fascinating. Don't deny it.
**This is a lie. I knew about pornography at a much younger age.
***My most recent writing project (which I refuse to talk about until it's actually done, but it has damn near filled up my Moleskine) is in fact a work of Nonfiction, and one that is even topical in this day and age. Now whether or not I will finish the damned thing while it is still topical is up for debate. Also when did I start doing this footnote thing instead of lengthy parentheticals? |
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| See? This is not cool. |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|12:46 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Disgruntled | ] |
Guys, it really really shits when I get sent home early, especially when I'm trying very hard to work my full shift so that the proverbial Fat Cash that will make this godawful job worthwhile makes its way into my account. Cutting me two hours early is not going to make me happy, nor is it going to bring in the Fat Cash.
I do apologize to you readers out there, because it seems that all I can do these days is to bitch about the new ways my job fucks me around, and you deserve better than that. Unfortunately it's all I can think of at the moment, so maybe I'll have to start making posts during the day when I have not yet gone to work instead.
Also I should probably start forcing myself to talk about other things, like how I've really grown to love Hunter S Thompson's writing, or how I got some of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, or how Bone is one of the best stories I've read in a while.
So we'll try for that next time, shall we? |
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| For the time being. |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|12:06 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Hrm | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | This Ain't A Surfin' Movie--Minus the Bear | ] |
I suppose that I should've known that Diablo II wasn't going to magically decide to work just because I grabbed it from Blizzard's website. It was a silly thought, but dammit I want to play some Diablo II is that so wrong?
Oh well.
I actually start working nothing but eight and a half hour shifts today, running from now up through May somemthingth, which is going to drive me insane but fortunately that will probably help with my writing. Make it seem more lively, or something.
Apropos of work, I actually have been hideously tempted to do a variety of things on the job recently, not the least of which was to take an office chair and race it around the processing floor. Thus far, I've resisted the urge to do so (a good thing, because that shit would get me fired), although I did urge a group of temps to rise up and strike down their oppressor from her golden throne...
I have poor impulse control. |
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| Ignoring the other side of the story |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|11:17 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Hmm | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Twenty-One Said Three Times Quickly--Dillinger Four | ] |
Work has become far more interesting since I decided to pay attention to the stuff that goes on around me. There are so many stories to be told there, and more than a few of them are the sorts of stories that leave you shaking with anger and wanting to start a bloody revolution.
"Blood in the streets" has become a sort of rallying cry for myself and one of my co-workers, because honestly there's only so much shit you can see go down before you get to thinking that there needs to be some sort of major change, only to realize that you are one of many powerless pukes who cannot pull off the change using the available resources.
Out of the box thinking is therefore required. |
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| Don't ask |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|12:51 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Ohioland | ] |
| [ | State of Mind |
| | Pretty good | ] |
| [ | Rocking Out To |
| | Sluttering(May 4th)--Jawbreaker | ] |
It's been a pretty decent enough day for me, all told. I managed to get some writing done, managed to get some reading done, and basically have come away from today feeling as if life is pretty okay. It really is pretty okay, and the weather was even gorgeous today so that I could hardly be bothered to stay in a dour mood. I defy anyone to try to be grumpy when the sun is shining, birds are singing, and a cool breeze is carrying the scent of grass and flowers on it.
I suppose if you're allergic to the scent of grass you might be able to pull it off, but I think even then you'll probably have a problem with it. Then of course I had to go to work, which was a bummer. Work seems to be a series of bummers, and while I don't particularly enjoy my time there I at least have found a way to make the time move along (as well as given myself a reason to keep showing up every day beyond the money, which is a nice enough reason but not enough for me most days).
I also grabbed a few new albums recently, and cannot, cannot recommend you finding copies of Cat Empire's So Many Nights strenuously enough. These dudes had me grooving down the hallway at work today, drawing a few odd glances that I didn't care about, because when that shit is playing the world and the opinions of those therein become a nonissue. As a pretty painfully self-conscious dude, I can endorse this.
This may be news to you, and may not be news to you, and probably you don't give a shit because I wouldn't either, but I got a Twitter account and don't remember mentioning it here before. If you think that I am an interesting enough dude to follow the shit that pops into my head during the day, well, go ahead and sign yourself on.
That's all I've got for now, guys. Honestly most of my writing mojo is being expended elsewhere these days, so I can't even provide the sort of well-thought-out (ha!) thought-provoking (ha ha ha!) discussions I used to have with myself right now. Once this project is over, maybe we'll go back to the way things were.
Maybe. |
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forddent's journal